When I moved back to the U.S. after living abroad, I needed some help getting on my feet. Eventually I did get on my feet and I’ll never forget the feeling of pride I felt the first time my accountant told me I had paid a million dollars in taxes. It was a sign of how much I had achieved in that realm of my life. But years earlier I was on food stamps for about a years… enough time to get myself established in San Francisco, where I started a business. To this day, I feel so incredibly grateful that that program was there for me when I needed it— as I was so many years later when Medicare saved my life by existing when I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
I’ve known the Republicans Party was my enemy for as long as I’ve known there was a Republican Party. They’re always wanted to take stuff away. They still do— whether it’s the freedom of Choice for women, contraceptives, the right to read books and partake in a free exchange of information without the heavy hand of tyrannical government… or the social programs so many American depend n, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps (SNAP as they call it today).
In their rush to lower already WAY too low taxes on the rich, conservatives want to eliminate as much spending as possible. And they’re using the debt ceiling as leverage. “Don’t give in to our demands and we’ll crash your economy.” Or as Texas fascist Chip Roy put it in his threat to mainstream conservatives: “I’m not there to get second place. I’m there to win… If these sons-of-bitches want to try to end-run us, game on.” He’s pissed that the Problem Solvers Caucus are looking for a compromise to prevent a government shutdown. Roy wants to cause maximum pain. His backward, gerrymandered district southwest of Austin has an R+21 partisan lean. He doesn’t give a shit about swing voters or moderates. He’s out for blood.
Tony Romm and Leigh Caldwell reported that the package McCarthy is moving forward would, in return for raising the debt ceiling for about a year, “reduce spending at federal health-care, education, science and labor agencies to levels adopted in the 2022 fiscal year, amounting potentially to a roughly $130 billion cut. Those agencies also would be subject to new spending caps.”
Romm and Caldwell continued “Republicans further hope to use the legislation to roll back Biden’s recent student debt cancellation plan, recover unspent coronavirus aid funds and advance legislation to pave the way for more oil and gas drilling. And GOP leaders hope to introduce new work requirements for low-income Americans who receive federal aid, including those enrolled in the food stamp and Medicaid health-insurance programs. ‘If you don’t have money to pay for things, you don’t ask for an increase in the credit card,’ said Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the leader of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which has aggressively sought significant spending cuts. ‘We’re looking at a pretty robust rescissions package that will save us a fair amount of money.’ Even in conflict-prone Washington— where fiscal deadlines often loom until resolutions arrive at the 11th hour— the uncertainty has created a growing sense of panic… Many GOP lawmakers caution that their legislative work is unfinished, a reflection of the lingering schisms within the ideologically divided House Republican conference. Those tensions have been on public display in recent weeks, as reports surfaced about new infighting involving McCarthy and his own leadership team. And any GOP bill is all but guaranteed to fail in the Senate, where Democratic leaders have called for an increase in the debt ceiling without conditions.”
But do the Republicans even have the 218 votes they need to pass the kind of slash-and-burn proposal that extremists like Roy, Perry and Republican Study Group chieftain Kevin Hern and other neo-fascists are demanding? The Republicans have 222 members and they don’t all live in districts with R+21 partisan leans like Roy’s or R+28 leans like Hern’s backward east Oklahoma district.
So… back to taking away stuff from the American people. Politico reported that the McCarthy proposal “will include broad moves to restrict food assistance for millions of low-income Americans. His GOP colleagues in the Senate aren’t optimistic any of those measures will survive. McCarthy’s initial list calls for expanding the age bracket for people who must meet work requirements in order to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Food Assistance Program or SNAP, while closing what Republicans say are ‘loopholes’ in existing restrictions.”
These people are savages. “Cutting spending on federal food assistance programs is a perennial Republican target, and House conservatives are eager to make it part of any agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which the country must do later this year to avoid a default crisis. But Senate Democrats have said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber, and with the help of key Senate Republicans, they have killed off a series of similar House GOP efforts over the years— including a 2018 push involving McCarthy and his current top debt limit lieutenant Rep. Garret Graves (LA). The early response from Senate Republicans this time around does not bode well for a different outcome in 2023.
McCarthy and his team are now confronting that reality as they try to hold together their own caucus vis-a-vis the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House. McCarthy, Graves and other top House Republicans have briefed most of the caucus on their plans in a series of calls that stretched into the weekend. So far, leaders have avoided key defections by staying away from too much detail— for example, they have yet to outline a specific plan to close the so-called “loopholes” in the existing SNAP work requirements, which Republicans complain primarily blue states are using to waive some work requirements. Taking a tough line would please the most conservative GOP members, but alienate Republicans from swing districts, and vice versa.
Already, the talk of shrinking SNAP, which currently serves 41 million low-income Americans, is raising pressure on many Republicans that represent districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. Several of those members have raised internal concerns, especially about proposals from their colleagues that would add work requirements for some low-income parents who have children under 18 living at home, according to two other people involved in those conversations, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal caucus matters. A handful of GOP freshmen from New York, one of the states that consistently asks the federal government to waive some work requirements for SNAP recipients, are in an especially tricky spot. Constituents have begun pressing them to oppose efforts that would further restrict SNAP and other key assistance following the loss of key pandemic-era aid— which Biden administration officials argue helped keep the country from falling into a deeper hunger crisis in the wake of Covid-19.
At a farm bill listening session in Rep. Mark Molinaro’s (R-NY) upstate district last Friday, local farmers, food bank operators and anti-hunger advocates urged lawmakers to defend and even expand current SNAP programs.
One state administrator called for “easing burdensome and complicated work and reporting requirements” to provide better access to the program, as the administration’s pandemic-era pause on certain SNAP work requirements is set to end in July. A food bank operator warned of a looming “hunger cliff” in the country as families continue to reel from the fallout of Covid-19. She urged members of Congress “not make decisions on the back of the most vulnerable people.”
Eric Ooms, vice president of the New York branch of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s leading agricultural lobby, told the lawmakers who attended the listening session not to think of SNAP as a “city thing,” noting that the program is a key lifeline to low-income Americans in rural areas where food insecurity “is higher than it’s ever been.”
Molinaro, who says his family relied on food stamps during his childhood, has indicated general support for some SNAP reforms, saying he understands the “inefficiencies” of the program through his experience as a former county executive charged with overseeing it. But he has declined to say if he would support the proposals to expand work requirements that his colleagues have been pushing for months.
In his closing remarks on Friday, Molinaro sounded a note of support for SNAP but indicated only the most needy should get aid— an argument Republicans have used in their campaign to reduce the size of the program.
“Yes, those that struggle the hardest need to know that they have the support, not only of SNAP, but of other wrap-around services,” he said.
Derrick Van Orden, a Trump-aligned Republican who represents a swing district in Wisconsin, spoke during the listening session of his family’s struggle with poverty and reliance on food stamps when he was a child. While he acknowledges some flaws in the current system, he said, “I’m a member of Congress because of these programs.”
“There’s a lot of people who have not gone to bed hungry at night, and I have. And there’s no place for that in America,” Van Orden said.
Molinaro’s district has an R+1 partisan lean and he won with 50.8% last year, and Van Orden’s is n easier to defend R+9 district but last year he beat an exceptionally weak conservative Democratic opponent with just 51.9% of the vote. Republicans in swing districts, especially in New York, California, Iowa, Virginia are already in trouble and going after SNAP could make it a lot tougher— if not improbable— for them to be reelected. On an especially bright note, it would almost certainly mean curtains for Lauren Boebert, who only managed to survive last year 163,839 (50.08%) to 163,293 (49.92%).